estimony_, that Barrow's Strait was barred with the
accumulated ice of years,--and this in the face of an autumnal drift of
a naval squadron for 350 miles in the pack of Lancaster. What say these
barrier-builders to the winter drift of the American schooners under
Lieutenant De Haven? Does his marvellous cruise teach us nothing?
Between the 1st of November, 1850, and the 6th of June, 1851, his
squadron was swept in one vast field of ice from the upper part of
Wellington Channel to the southward of Cape Walsingham, in Davis's
Straits, through a tortuous route of full 1000 miles! Yes, reader, the
"Rescue" and "Advance" were beset in young bay-ice in and about
Wellington Channel; but during the winter, amidst the darkness, amidst
fierce gales, when the God of storms alone could and did shield those
brave barks, they and _the ice_ in _which they had been beset_, moved,
with few pauses, steadily and slowly to the Atlantic Ocean, and reached
it by the summer of the following year.

It is true, our expedition was prevented, by ice, from advancing to the
west of Griffith's Island. But let it not be supposed that we came, in
that direction, upon any _fixed_ bar of ice or interminable floe-edge:
far otherwise; for when, as I have elsewhere said, Lieutenant Aldrich
was sent, a few days after our arrival at winter quarters, to travel on
foot to Lowther Island, he found the task a hopeless one, as _water_,
bay-ice, and a broken pack, lay between Somerville Island and it. We,
likewise, in our spring journeys, found ice, smooth as glass, formed,
evidently during the past winter, surrounding Lowther Island. It was
traced by Lieutenant M'Clintock, leading, in exactly the form of the
lead of water found in 1819 and 1820 by Sir E. Parry, in his voyage to
Winter Island; and there can be little doubt, that, beyond the
floe-pieces which choked the channel between Griffith's Island and Cape
Bunny, we should, in 1850, have found water leading us to Winter
Harbour, and up the noble channel north of Byam Martin Island.

Enough of icy barriers. I do not believe in Nature having placed such
fixtures on the "vasty deep;" but I am ready to allow that there are
places in which accumulations of ice naturally exist, and where the ice
moves away less rapidly than in other parts. By looking at the chart,
and taking into consideration the geographical conformation of such
spots, the cause will at once appear.

In a line across the head of Davis's Strait